Preventing Blocked Drains in a Delhi Home

1. Never down the kitchen sink

The kitchen line blocks with fat, and fat is the hardest blockage to clear because it coats the pipe wall rather than sitting in a lump.

• Cooking oil, ghee, malai and the fat poured off meat. It goes down warm and liquid, cools in the pipe within a metre, and sets. Wipe greasy pans and karahis with a paper towel before washing, and collect used oil in a container for disposal.
• Atta, besan, maida and rice starch. Flour and water is glue. It swells, sticks to the fat already lining the pipe, and builds a plug. Scrape a paratha board into the bin, not the sink.
• Tea leaves and coffee grounds. They do not dissolve, they settle, and they bind everything else together. A strainer over the plughole stops the whole problem.
• Rice, dal, vegetable peels and eggshells. They swell or sink. If your sink has a food waste grinder, that changes what it can handle, but a plain waste pipe cannot.
• Cement, plaster, paint, tile grout or wash water from any of them. These set hard inside a trap and cannot be flushed out afterwards. During any renovation, tell workers explicitly where they may and may not wash tools.

2. Never down a bathroom drain or the WC

The bathroom blocks with hair and with things that were never designed to break down.

• Hair, beard trimmings and nail clippings. Hair mats with soap scum into a felt that catches everything else. Fit a cheap mesh hair trap over the shower and floor drain and clear it weekly — this one item prevents most bathroom blockages.
• Wet wipes of any kind, including ones labelled flushable. They do not break up like tissue. They are the single most common cause of a blocked shared soil line in a housing society, and one flat’s habit backs up several flats’ drains.
• Sanitary items, cotton wool, ear buds and dental floss. All of them snag on a pipe joint and catch everything that follows.
• Face packs, mud masks, clay and plaster of paris. They set inside the trap. This is a real and frequent basin blockage.
• Old medicines, paint, thinner or solvents. These belong in proper disposal, not the waste line.
• Anything solid that fell in. Fish it out rather than flushing it through. A toothbrush cap, a bottle top or a small toy will lodge in the trap and stay there.

3. The five-minute weekly habits

Prevention beats clearing, and all of this is free.

• Fit strainers everywhere. Kitchen sink, shower, floor trap, basin. They cost very little and they stop the problem at the surface where you can simply lift and bin it.
• Pour a kettle of hot water down each drain once a week. Very hot, but let a boiling kettle stand a minute first so you do not stress PVC or craze ceramic. It moves soap and fat before either can build up.
• Once a month, baking soda then vinegar, then a hot flush. Half a cup of soda, a cup of white vinegar, fifteen minutes, then hot water. It keeps a line clear without the collateral damage of caustic chemicals.
• Pull the basin stopper and clean it monthly. Thirty seconds, and it is the fix for most slow basins — our slow wash basin guide covers doing it properly.
• Run water in every unused bathroom weekly. It keeps traps from drying out, which is what causes drain smells in Delhi heat.
• Before monsoon, clear the balcony and terrace drains. Delhi dust, leaves and stray polythene block outdoor drains, and once they overflow the water goes into the slab and the walls instead. This is the single most valuable seasonal drain job in the city.

4. Remember the line is shared

In a Delhi flat your waste joins a soil stack running the full height of the building, and that changes what good practice means.

• What you flush affects flats below you. A blockage in the stack usually shows first as water backing up into the lowest flat, not into yours.
• Take gurgling seriously. If the WC bubbles when you drain the basin, air is being forced back up the shared line past a partial blockage. Report it early, when it is still a cleaning job.
• Do not treat a backing-up drain as your own problem to chemical away. Caustic cleaner poured into a blocked shared line simply sits there and makes it hazardous for whoever opens it.
• Ask the RWA when the stacks and the sewer chambers were last cleaned. Scheduled cleaning of shared lines prevents the emergency that eventually affects everyone.
• If several flats in your column have slow drains at once, raise it together. A shared problem reported by one flat is a complaint; reported by four it is a maintenance job.

If you already have a blockage, our blocked drain guide covers the free fixes to try first and how to tell a local clog from the main line.